Chiaroscuro brings together the American guitarist Ralph Towner and the Sardinian trumpeter Paolo Fresu in a duo of unusual instrumentation, guitar against trumpet and flugelhorn. The programme is made of Towner originals, two free improvisations and one standard, Blue in Green from Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. It is an apt choice for a trumpeter whose pure tone still carries echoes of early Miles. It was Towner's 22nd ECM album as a leader and Fresu's first.
Towner, born in Washington in 1940, studied classical guitar in Vienna with Karl Scheit, co-founded Oregon in 1970 and made his first ECM album, Trios/Solos, in 1972. He met Fresu at a festival in Sardinia. Fresu had already appeared on ECM's sister label WATT as the guest on Carla Bley's The Lost Chords Find Paolo Fresu (2007). The duo recorded in October 2008 at Artesuono Recording Studio in Udine, with Stefano Amerio as engineer and Manfred Eicher as producer. Towner plays classical, 12-string and baritone guitars, and Fresu trumpet and flugelhorn.
The baritone guitar, tuned low, was a new instrument for Towner. He uses it on Sacred Place, a folk-like hymn heard first as a guitar solo and then as a duet in which the horn sounds like a brass chorale. On Doubled Up the same guitar's busy fingerwork meets Fresu's muted trumpet. Punta Giara rolls along on a gentle dance groove. Two pieces come from Towner's earlier records. Wistful Thinking returns from Open Letter, his duo album with Peter Erskine, and Zephyr, first heard on Oregon's Ecotopia, becomes a free-tempo conversation. The album closes with Two Miniatures and Postlude, both improvised, with Fresu flying over the 12-string.
In The Guardian John Fordham wrote that in this unusual dialogue "Towner opens new windows on his delicate songs". Robert Shore in Jazzwise heard a high-contrast work, true to its title, and singled out the baritone guitar with Fresu's flugelhorn. In the Boston Phoenix (2010) Jon Garelick warned that the open, airy surface might seem too easy on the ear. Then he added: "But that surface is deceptive." For him the real news was Fresu, his tone warm and glowing in the cool production. In Germany the album was placed on the Bestenliste 1/2010 of the Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik.
CD edition, ECM 2085, first released in November 2009.
